September 14th Weekend Predictions & Predilections

Opening this Weekend

Box Office Predictions

The Predator

The Nun

A Simple Favor

Crazy Rich Asians

The Meg

What You Should See

This week did not turn out how I thought it would.

I think it’s fair to judge the prospect of a new Predator movie with skepticism, it’s a series with really only one good entry from more than 30 years ago followed by a plethora of disappointing sequels and reboots after all, and even with the choice of director Shane Black, a guy with a pretty strong track record and ties to that one good original, this new one, simply titled The Predator, was never a guaranteed home run. But to see the reviews and to hear that it turned out that badly from people I trust, ridiculously bad, I wasn’t expecting that this week. Similarly, it’s not the biggest shock in the world to hear that Matthew McConaughey’s latest based-on-a-true-story feature that looked pretty good, White Boy Rick, didn’t turn out quite right, we’ve been here before, but… I don’t know, I just assumed this one would turn out. And I felt like at least one of the two would turn out to be worth seeing. The two big bombs for this new movie weekend, though, are coming up next.

Ghostbusters. There, I said it. Now I understand that you might not have hated the 2016 Ghostbusters, but none of us here cared for it, and its relative lack of success put its director, Paul Feig, into movie jail for a bit, so it’s really surprising that his latest movie, A Simple Favor, has turned out to be one of the most well-received of the weekend’s new movie releases. Almost as surprising as it is that a Nicolas Cage movie, the crazy-looking horror thriller, Mandy, would end up with a 96% Certified Fresh rating. Nicolas Cage. To be honest though, I’m still not very hyped about either of those movies, nor does The Children Act strike me as essential viewing.

What I would recommend for this weekend, then, are two smaller movies opening this weekend, We the Animals, playing at the Princess, and Wall, playing at Metro Cinema. You can just tell after a few seconds of its trailer have gone by that We the Animals is probably going to be an important movie this year, and Wall, written by and starring English playwright and screenwriter David Hare, has an extremely unique look, both for its marriage of animation and real-life imagery and its examination of the circumstances surrounding the Israeli West Bank barrier. Wall is premiering this weekend, playing on both Saturday and Sunday, while its Wednesday, September 19th showing will feature its director, Cam Christiansen, in attendance.